Limited appetite for math

Alliston Herald

ALLISTON - Don’t make me do math at the grocery store.

It has taken me most of my adult life to learn how to shop properly. For years it didn’t matter to me that the small numbers at the bottom of a price label indicated the cost of the item per size. I only read the price listed in bold numbers. As far as I was concerned, the price was the money that came out of my wallet.

Gord’s efforts to each me otherwise proved futile for a very long time.

“Okay let’s look at the deli meat you bought. How much was it?”

“$6.”

“How much per kilo though?”

“It was $6.”

“But per kilo it was $27.”

“Don’t worry about it. I only paid $6.”

“Let’s try this again.”

Math was never my strong suit and it took me years to value what those numbers meant. But once I understood, I read every price label in the store. Then I would come home and show off my purchases to my husband.

“This bag of corn was 20 cents less expensive per kilo than the smaller bag!”

It’s not often that one hoists frozen vegetables over one’s head in triumph, but I was proud of my new purchasing acumen.

Therefore when Gord and I were shopping recently and noticed a change in pricing, I was concerned to say the least.

“Do we need chicken?” I asked him.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “Did you check the basement freezer before we left?”

“Nope.”

Gord tilted his head towards me.

“Do you ever check the basement freezer?” he asked.

“Does asking you what’s in the basement freezer count as checking the freezer?”

“Let’s go find the chicken.”

And there it was in the end display – the change. The packages of chicken were priced at $5 each. There was no advertised price per kilo. It was simply $5.

I knew the price per kilo could be calculated. The weight of the chicken was on still on the package. But I didn’t want to calculate it. I just wanted to dig out my reading glasses and squint at the label to know what I was spending.

Mind you, most of the meat in the store was still labelled the old way. But why the change at all? It’s likely because of other stores in the area doing the same thing. Who wants to be the only store to print $28 per kilo on a product when you can simply print $10?

I didn’t buy the chicken.

At another store we found a great deal on pork.

“It’s only $2.99 a kilo,” I pointed out to Gord.

“No it isn’t,” he answered.

“Hey I may have dropped out of Grade 13 calculus, but I can recognize a two and a nine – and another nine – when I see them.”

“It’s $2.99 a pound.”

“Oh. Why are they listing pounds so predominantly? This is Canada. We’re metric.”